Category Archives: finance and insurance

The use of free ports to stash arts

Interesting older item from New York Times on the use of free ports to stash away artworks (and other contraband): The drab free port zone near the Geneva city center, a compound of blocky gray and vanilla warehouses surrounded by train … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, finance and insurance, free ports/zones, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Playing with trains in the sand: reflections on the MENA Cargo show

GUEST POST BY R.Z. Having spent the last couple of years researching Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), attending their industry gatherings and military expos, I was very excited to shift gears to a new project and curious what differences … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, finance and insurance, infrastructure, logistics, Middle East, militaries, political economy | Leave a comment

Train whistles and futures

I am reading two books simultaneously through both of which trains rattle and whistle and snake…  But which in some ways are as different as they can be.  Bill Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis is a panoramic history of the making of Chicago in the … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, construction, environment, finance and insurance, infrastructure, labour, literature, political economy, transport | Leave a comment

The blue banana

Last week, huge protests took place in Brussels, with the trade unions reporting some 130,000-150,000 people showing up; and major clashes with the police.  The protests in fact have been going on for some time now.  And in the April … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, finance and insurance, infrastructure, labour, logistics, political economy, ports, transport, war | Leave a comment

Mohammad Al Fayed and the ports business

It seems like Mohammad al-Fayed (of Harrod’s fame – and obviously many other ventures) was also in the port business.   In 1964, he entered a deal with Papa Doc Duvalier of Haiti, whereby he invested $5 million in the … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, construction, finance and insurance, infrastructure, logistics, Middle East, political economy, ports | Leave a comment

Transport capital

There is a lot to chew on here, but this sentence really struck me: “As for finance, there’s been no tendency for its executives’ pay to outpace that of nonfinancial executives. On the contrary: even during the bubble years of the 2000s, … Continue reading

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Piracy and Counter-piracy

There is a kind of romance around piracy.  It is the romance of anti-authority figures and of a life lived not just in the margins but outside the boundaries.   Just think about the masses of novels and films about piracy … Continue reading

Posted in finance and insurance, logistics, piracy, political economy, ports, readings, shipping conditions, ships, transport | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Sailing on dhows and working in the auto industry

  A facebook friend sent me a URL to a blogpost which introduced Sons of Sinbad by Alan Villiers…  What struck me was the contention that the book was “probably the only work of western travel literature that focuses on the seafarers of … Continue reading

Posted in finance and insurance, labour, Middle East, political economy, readings, seafaring, shipping conditions, ships, the sea, transport | Leave a comment